This document is a WORK IN PROGRESS.
This is just a quick personal cheat sheet: treat its contents with caution!

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ps

ps (process status) is a program that displays the currently running processes. A related Unix utility named top provides a real-time view of the running processes.

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Table of contents

• Use

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Use

Reference(s)

• https://www.binarytides.com/linux-ps-command/
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ps-command-in-linux-with-examples/

• Print all processes:

  $ ps -e
  

• Print all processes with more details (additional columns):

  $ ps -ef | less
  

• Print processes with custom columns (see "STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS" section of $ man ps for more column header to display):

  $ ps ax -o pid,uname,pcpu,pmem,comm
  

• Print processes owned by a user:

  $ ps -u user-name
  

• Print processes by "exact" name, an "exact" process name is needed (no partial name or wildcard), e.g. sshd:

  $ ps -f -C sshd
  

• Print processes by "partial" name, to search the process list more flexibly:

  $ ps -ef | grep ssh
  

• Print processes by process id:

  $ ps -f -p 1036,1569,11006
  

• Print the 10 processes that have the biggest CPU usage:

  $ ps -ef --sort=-pcpu | head -10
  

• Print processes by memory usage:

  $ ps -ef --sort=-pmem
  

• Print processes hierarchy in a tree style:

  $ ps -ef --forest
  

• Print the threads of a process, e.g. threads of process id 3150:

  $ ps -p 3150 -L
  

• Print all processes owned by you:

  $ ps -x
  

• Print all processes associated with current terminal:

  $ ps -T
  

• Print all processes associated with a terminal:

  $ ps -a
  

• Print all processes NOT associated with a terminal (negation command):

  $ ps -a -N
  

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